


face the shadows

by heartofstanding



Category: 14th Century CE RPF
Genre: Coming to terms with dying, F/M, Heavy Angst, Military Metaphors, Terminal Illnesses, blaming Edward III for everything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:08:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23444488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartofstanding/pseuds/heartofstanding
Summary: Edward, seriously ill and slowly dying, wants to talk to Joan about their future. Joan doesn't want to have this conversation.
Relationships: Edward the Black Prince/Joan of Kent
Comments: 11
Kudos: 20





	face the shadows

**Author's Note:**

> The inspiration for this fic comes from a similar scene in Susan Howatch's _The Wheel of Fortune_ and conversations I've had with my friends about the Prince's illness and how Joan and he might have coped.
> 
> Historical notes at the end.
> 
> Finally, apologies to Edward III.

**October 1372**

Joan was in the gardens when the messengers from the king arrived. She saw them and stayed where she was, lying on the grass, Richard’s head on her belly. They had been making the shapes of clouds into stories and she didn’t want to disturb Richard or end their game. Besides, the messenger would only want to see Edward. Once, they might have tried to speak to her but she had made it plain that she wasn’t a tool the king could use to badger and cajole Edward into doing his will.

She was bitter with the king, having watched Edward pay dearly each time he had gone against his own sense because the king willed otherwise. It had been the king who insisted on the campaign in Castile despite Edward’s concerns but it had not been the king who paid when the promised rewards came to nothing. It had been Edward who had to find some way to cover the soldiers’ wages and it had been Edward whose health had been battered and stolen on the campaign.

Now the king wished to pretend that everything was as it was before, that his son’s health didn’t lay in ruins and his own wasn’t rapidly failing. And if that wasn’t enough, the king had insisted on leading another campaign to France earlier this year himself and _of course_ Edward had to accompany him as he had done years ago. That, too, came to nothing but the further erosion of Edward’s health.

She would not welcome the king’s messengers and the king seemed to respect her in this since he no longer asked her to intercede on his behalf.

‘Mama? Who are they?’ Richard whispered, pointing at the messengers

‘Your grandfather’s men.’

‘Should we go and greet them?’

‘No, dearest.’

Joan hugged him tightly. It would only be a matter of time before the vultures turned their attention from Edward to Richard. If she had her way, she would take them both somewhere secret and hide them but that was impossible.

*

In the evening, once the men had gone to their lodgings for the night – she had managed to avoid hosting them herself, at least – Edward asked for her to come to his room and speak to him. He was out of bed and sitting the table, dressed and his hair and beard neatly combed. She hoped it was because he was feeling stronger but suspected he had made the effort to receive his father’s messengers. He looked at her, his face grim, and Joan’s heart faltered.

‘Well, what did they want?’

‘My father requires me to surrender the principality of Aquitaine in person for he needs my counsel and advice on how best to proceed.’

‘What did you say?’ Joan said. He couldn’t go, he wasn’t well enough for travel. If he pushed himself, he would only end up bedridden far from her and far from home. But he always tried to obey his father. ‘Edward, what did you say?’

‘That I would try.’

‘You will not,’ Joan said sharply. ‘You owe him nothing. And you know well enough that it would be bad for your health and he wouldn’t heed your advice, he only wants to talk you into not surrendering it and returning—’

‘I know. I won’t go.’ He sighed. ‘But it’s best to pretend I will – that way he can’t delay it any longer.’

‘He has no right to ask you,’ Joan said stiffly, relieved that Edward, at least, had seen sense in disobeying his father. ‘None at all.’

Edward grimaced. ‘He’s my father. He’s sick and full of grief, longing for the old days.’

‘He’s not so full of grief nor particularly ill,’ Joan said, ‘or else he wouldn’t be consorting with that woman.’

‘Peace, Joan. She gives him comfort.’

‘And – what? That’s an excuse to run you into your grave? You’re sicker than he is.’

Edward shrugged and scrubbed a hand over his face. For a moment, she watched him and tried to remember the last time she had seen him healthy and strong. The day he had left for Castile but for some reason she couldn’t remember anything of that day but his banner blowing in the cold wind.

‘There’s no need to talk about this,’ he said at last. ‘Will you sit down? There are more important things to discuss.’

She sat down opposite him, smoothing her skirts over her knees. The room was dark and shadowy, the fire burning in the grate and a handful of candles set at strategic points. She wondered if the shadows were supposed to obscure Edward’s face, hide how badly the illness had ravaged his body. It only made him seem gaunter, dark shadows were pooled below his bright blue eyes. She swallowed. _You’re making me nervous,_ she wanted to say but could not.

He laid his hands flat on the table.

‘Look,’ he said briskly. ‘This isn’t what either of us wanted or expected when we got married. And we were happy, for a time, weren’t we?’

‘Gloriously,’ Joan said. She tasted something bitter on her tongue.

He nodded but it was like he barely heard her. ‘Right. But that is over. I’m not going to recover – each time we’ve thought that, we’ve been proved wrong.’

‘If you were allowed to rest in peace, without being disturbed—’

‘And this isn’t the life you wanted or the life you deserve, playing nursemaid to a cripple,’ he said without taking notice of her. ‘And by Christ, this isn’t fair to Richard either. He’s a child, he should be out playing, making friends. Not living so cut off from the world. I know you and Burley do your best but that boy should be climbing trees, not making vigils at a sickbed.’

Joan felt sick. She wanted to say something, she wanted to scream but her tongue was heavy, her throat ringed with sharp teeth. A black pit was opening inside her, a deep abyss tearing through her body. She wanted to weep but her eyes were dry. He couldn’t be saying what she thought he was saying. It was an act of love – or at least meant as one – but she only felt its barbed cruelty.

‘You deserve better things,’ he said quietly, his face full of grief. ‘Both of you. I want you to go to Wallingford Castle, live there. Make it a court of beauty and joy – live there, Joan, and be happy. Take Richard with you and let him be a child. Take a lover, if you wish. I don’t care. Be free and be happy.’

‘You fool,’ she said, the words choking her. ‘How can I be happy without you? How can you ask me that?’

Edward closed his eyes tightly, his mouth pressed flat and grim.

‘I am not a soldier you can order to your liking,’ she said. ‘You’re not at war now.’

‘Aren’t I?’ he said. ‘A different war, a different enemy but a war all the same. And we know how this one will end.’

Joan feel the abyss inside her deepen. Of course she knew. He was dying. Edward would recover some strength but never to the level it had been and even then, it wouldn’t last. He would overtax himself, trying to please his father, trying to fulfil his duties, and his health would fail again. She didn’t want to think of it, couldn’t think of it without wanting to lay down and give up.

‘How can you tell me to leave you?’ she said. ‘I _love_ you.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘But—’

‘And Richard – he adores you like nothing else and you – you dote on him, and you would give him up?’

‘You deserve better than me. Both of you.’

‘No,’ Joan said sharply. ‘ _We_ deserve better than this. All three of us.’

Edward shook his head. ‘I have sinned.’

‘So what?’ Joan snapped. ‘You feel wretched and guilty, as if God is punishing you – so what? It doesn’t mean you deserve it. Did Job deserve his torments?’

‘Jeanette, I am hardly Job,’ he said, brow furrowing.

She made an impatient gesture. It didn’t matter. ‘And you tell me to _take a lover._ Why would I do that?’

‘I know you,’ he said quietly. ‘I know how you delight in love-making and I – I can’t.’

‘I don’t care,’ she said. ‘Do you think I want any other man but you to touch me?’

His lips twitched. ‘You could take a woman as a lover.’

She almost laughed, almost considered it. ‘Do you think anyone could compare to you? I would never be sated because I could never find your match. And, besides,’ she said, making herself smile. ‘There are other ways to enjoy ourselves.’

He smiled sadly.

‘But,’ he said. ‘I am not going to get any better – I’m already a burden, already a weight dragging you down. You need to cut yourself loose – yourself and our son.’

‘You will break his heart.’

‘I will break it one way or the other, at least this way he will be happier, in the long term. Consider it, Jeanette, please.’

Joan bit her lip. He would not let it go, would not surrender to her. It ached and burnt inside her – he would surrender to his illness but not to her.

‘Then,’ Joan said, ‘we will consider it when the times comes. All of us, together. If it comes.’

‘It will.’

Joan reached out and laid her hands over his. Curled their fingers together and held on tight. ‘I am not letting go or leaving. Not now, not ever.’

He bit his lip, turned his hand to grasp at hers. ‘You will regret it,’ he said quietly, ‘and when you do, you must free yourself and Richard.’

She shook her head, hated the table between them. ‘How could I regret it? How could I regret one moment with you?’

‘I don’t want to trap you.’

‘And if our positions were reversed,’ she said, squeezing his hands so tightly her knuckles turned white, ‘would you leave me?’

He didn’t like that. ‘That’s an entirely different situation.’

‘How is it?’

‘I only ever loved you,’ he said quietly. ‘I only ever wanted you.’

She closed her eyes tightly. He hadn’t said it to guilt her and had never tried to guilt her on that matter but she felt guilt all the same. She could remember Thomas Holland cupping her face and saying, _do you ever think about how much he loves you? To him, you are the foremost of all ladies and he can’t have you. Because you chose me._ Edward had always loved her more than he should have.

‘Well,’ she said, made herself sound bright. ‘We’ll have a wager on it, then. If I come to regret it, I’ll do as you want and leave. And if I don’t, you will never again attempt to bar me from your side. What do you think? It seems fair to me. Do you accept?’

He said nothing, watched her suspiciously. Then jerked his head in a stiff nod.

‘Alright. I accept your wager.’

‘Good,’ she said briskly. ‘A kiss to seal it and then we’ll go to bed. I want to hold you.’

He smiled and leant in to kiss her, his mouth tasting of mint. When he stood, he stumbled and she knew he had overreached himself. Cursing the king’s messengers, she steadied him, tucking his arm in hers and led him back to his bed. She laid her hands in his hair and kissed him again before she stripped him, washed him and rubbed rose-oil into his skin.

‘We should get Richard,’ he said. ‘He would like to join in a cuddle.’

‘He’ll be in bed asleep,’ she said. ‘But I will have him brought to us in the morning.’

Edward smiled, his eyelids drooping, but he managed to look appreciative when she undressed, slipped into bed behind him and pressed a kiss to the back of his neck.

*

Joan woke in the night. Edward was sitting on the edge of the bed, his back bowed and body trembling. She reached out, laid her hand between his shoulder blades and felt him recoil from her. She moved to sit beside him, pushing the bed-hangings open. In the dim light cast by the fire, she saw his face and it was a rictus of pain, tears wetting his cheeks. 

‘Lie back,’ she said. ‘Lie back – I will fetch someone.’

‘No,’ he said, grating the words out. ‘It’s nothing.’

‘They can give you something for the pain,’ Joan said desperately. ‘Something to help you rest.’

He shook his head. ‘It’s not that – I’m fine.’

‘You’re in pain.’

He said nothing, covered his face with his hands and shook. She reached out and ran a tentative hand over his shoulders, down the length of his spine. He didn’t recoil this time but leant into her touch.

‘I don’t want to die,’ he said in such a small, childlike voice. ‘I don’t want to live like this.’

She rested her head against his shoulder. There was nothing she could say. She couldn’t argue with him – whether she willed it or not, he was dying. He was sick and weak and it didn’t make sense how he, once so strong, could become this bed-bound creature, trying to claw his way back to health and slipping each time closer to his grave.

‘I want,’ he said, still in that small voice, ‘to be fit enough to walk hand-in-hand with you in the garden. To carry Richard on my back. Just that.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘It isn’t fair.’

‘I fight and I fight and I fight and _nothing_ changes.’

She clasped their hands together. Her heart was breaking again and there was nothing she could do. Their forces combined were formidable but against this illness, they were nowhere near enough. She and Edward might win a skirmish but the war raged on and even a good commander, she knew, could only fight one battle at a time and if the odds were stacked against them, they could only lose. She and Edward would lose battles and they would lose the war. You couldn’t win against death, couldn’t outpace it – it always waited and followed. All there was left to them was the acceptance of their inevitable defeat, to fight the battles they could and to take comfort in their small victories.

She couldn’t tell him that she despaired as much as he did. He needed her to be strong, to carry him when he could not carry himself. He needed her to be the person he had been at Poitiers – the commander to tell soldiers to be brave in the face of insurmountable odds and that, if this was to be their end, it would be a famous end, made into songs and written about for years to come.

‘So we accept it,’ she said. ‘We face the shadows and we do not flee. But nor do we bend or bow or break before them. Not until we must.’

He raised his head and studied her face, hope glinting in the far reaches of his eyes.

‘And,’ she said, ‘we fight together.’

**Author's Note:**

> It isn't known what illness killed the Black Prince in 1376 but it is believed it was contracted in 1367 on campaign in Castile. It has been traditionally assumed to be dysentery but no contemporary evidence supports this assumption and it would be impossible to survive dysentery for as long as the Prince did. There is a long list of possible illness or conditions that the Prince might have suffered but it is impossible to diagnose him accurately. It appears that Edward's health was not consistently terrible and he may have partially recovered at times.
> 
> 1372 was an interesting year. A reignition of hostilities between England and France saw a planned naval expedition involving the Prince, Edward III, John of Gaunt and more set off in August from Sandwich. However, fierce and adverse conditions saw the fleet scattered and progress almost impossible (it took more than a week to get beyond Winchelsea), resulting in the enterprise being abandoned. There is no real indication that the Prince's health was badly affected but I could easily imagine that, given he was already ill, the stress of the expedition and its difficulties might have lead to a relapse. Just over two months later, the Prince formally surrendered the principality of Aquitaine, suggesting that he recognised that his health would never improve enough that ruling Aquitaine again would ever be a viable option. Edward III did request the Prince attended in person but he did not. 
> 
> The idea of there being a rift between Edward III and the Prince comes from Michael Jones's biography of the Prince. He argues that the Castile campaign was the cause of the rift between them - the Prince didn't want to take part but was apparently overruled by Edward III - and the Prince came to see the campaign as a sin for which he was being punished. If this is true, I reasoned it would be fair for Joan of Kent to become resentful and bitter towards Edward III - he was the one who pushed for the campaign and now her husband was deathly sick as a result. It's also possible that Joan harboured some bitterness over the way her marriage to Thomas Holland was treated by Edward III and Philippa of Hainault, although it's impossible to know what exactly they knew about her marital situation or how they reacted. In my opinion, Joan is probably overly harsh to Edward III - as implied, his own health was pretty bad and he was probably still grief-stricken over the loss of his beloved Philippa of Hainault - but her feelings are justified. 
> 
> "...consorting with that woman" is a reference to Edward III's famously corrupt mistress, Alice Perrers. The historical Joan's feelings on her are unknown - I've read a few bizarre takes from BFFs to mortal enemies, but for me, Joan's dislike of her here is based on her feelings towards Edward III. 
> 
> After the Prince's death in 1376, Wallingford Castle was Joan's favourite residence and where she died. Again, there's no evidence the Prince advised her to make a life there but it isn't impossible that he knew she liked it there.
> 
> **Sources**  
>  Richard Barber, _Edward, Prince of Wales and Aquitaine: A Biography of the Black Prince_ , Boydell and Brewer, 1978)  
> Paul Booth, ‘The Last Week of the Life of Edward the Black Prince’, in _Contact and Exchange in Later Medieval Europe: Essays in Honour of Malcolm Vale_ , ed. Hannah Skoda, Patrick Lantschner and R.L.J. Shaw (The Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 2012)  
> Anthony Goodman, _Joan the Fair Maid of Kent: A Fourteenth Century Princess and her World_ (Boydell Press, 2017)  
> David Green, ‘Masculinity and medicine: Thomas Walsingham and the Death of the Black Prince’, _Journal of Medieval History_ , 35:1 (2009)  
> Michael Jones, _The Black Prince_ (Head of Zeus, 2017)  
> Penny Lawne, _Joan of Kent: The First Princess of Wales_ (Amberley, 2015)


End file.
